gently and approvingly.
“I’m such a nobody,” Andrei told me now. “I’ve done nothing.”
“You’ve done great things!” I protested. “You’ve won medals, broken records, founded schools, worked for charity. You’re an icon.”
“Yeah but I’ve never, you know. Bust balls. Or killed people.”
“I’ve never killed anyone,” I laughed at him.
“Yes, but you’ve manipulated circumstances so that they were killed.”
“Oh yeah, I’ve done that. Like the Turkish drug dealer who we poisoned with impotence-inducing drugs. He blew his brains out in his garage. That was a particularly effective gambit.”
“You are so fucking…” He searched for the world.
“Evil?”
“Steeped in life. Dangerous.” His eyes twinkled. “Sexy.”
It’s a fantasy moment. Because for me, none of these things are true. In my heart of hearts, I am still a mousy academic who becomes paralysed with shyness at parties and is terrified that life is passing her by. But, objectively speaking, I can see he has a point. I have, in my time, kicked some serious ass.
“Let’s eat.” The meal had arrived. Damn, it wasn’t lamb, I’d ordered fish. But I’d been looking forward to lamb for the last twenty minutes.
Andrei’s meal arrived. It was lamb.
“I don’t want fish any more, I want your lamb,” I told him, with unpardonable rudeness. But he swapped plates without a second thought, as if we were long-established lovers. A few seconds later, I asked, “How’s the fish?”
“Dry. Musty. Inedible,” he told me. “How’s the lamb?”
“It’s, ah. Sublime.”
I grinned sheepishly, feeling myself go red and hot with embarrassment. But he found it funny. Then he laughed, and admitted, “Actually the fish is very nice.”
“Let’s order some more wine,” I said.
“I get hangovers.”
“Take these.” I gave him some pills. I swallowed one myself. “It’s okay, they’re enhancing catalytic compounds, they’re not drugs. Your body will eat its own hangover.”
Andrei clicked a finger. The waiter turned and looked. Andrei pointed at the bottle. The waiter hurried off. Andrei took a sip of wine.
“I shouldn’t drink too much though.”
“Why not?”
“Well.” And now he’s blushing.
“Ah. You’re counting your chickens aren’t you?”
“Chickens?” His English idiom didn’t stretch to this one. I tried it in Russian: Are you hoping to fuck me?
Of course.
Good. Don’t worry, I have ways of dealing with flaccidity.
“Your Russian is very good,” he told me, approvingly.
“I’m told it’s a little archaic. Too much Dostoevsky.”
“He’s a writer, isn’t he?”
“I can see there’s a lot I have to teach you.”
That night we made love for the first time.
In fact he had drunk rather too much, so it was a slow start. And there were problems later on too. But that made it more fun for me.
His body was like granite, I savoured every muscle, the tautness, the power. I knew that his hands were impossibly strong. And, eventually, he rose to the occasion. I achieved six orgasms before he lost his focus and went limp again.
And I couldn’t believe my luck. I was dating the sexiest boy in the class.
But what could he possibly see in me?
I called it Sex and Death.
I learned the technique from a karate sensei in Camberwell, London. In his legendary dojo in a former marble factory off the Walworth Road, Sensei Eddy taught generations of South London kids his own brand of Eastern mysticism blended with East End savvy. Sensei Eddy came from a family of notorious armed robbers and spent five years in prison for a botched blagging that he committed as a very young man. But since going straight, Eddy had become a committed karateka, a vegetarian, an ascetic, and one of the greatest students in the West of mind/body control.
I’ve seen Eddy break a breezeblock with his head. I’ve seen him pluck a fly out of the air and release it from his other hand. He was nearly sixty when he became my karate master, and even without the benefit of age therapy he had the physique of a twenty-year-old. He was fast, he was strong, he was totally focused.
And he taught me the way to stop a man’s heart. It’s done with a single palm strike to the sternum, delivered with speed and lightness. It’s not intended as a killing technique, it’s an aid to meditation. Eddy did it to me – he struck me in my chest, my heart stopped and for ten exquisitely long seconds I felt myself die. My inner self seemed to be floating outside my fleshly body. The blood in my head roared like a waterfall. Then Eddy struck me again, and the heart restarted.
It’s a dangerous stunt to try on a woman with a history of heart attacks. But Eddy had a touching faith in his own powers, and in my natural resilience. And in the course of our training sessions he had encountered in me a strange stubbornness, a resistance to the idea of liberating my chi and entering a meditative state. So Eddy used this way to teach me the true transient nature of existence.
The second time I had sex with Andrei, despite my very best efforts, he proved to be totally impotent. I was astonished, and amused. But then I was horrified, as I saw a look of dismay and self-hate spread across his face. I realised then – this was a common occurrence for him.
I said the usual things about it not mattering, though my loins were burning with desire. He pleasured me in other ways, sipping and sucking as though I were a precious brandy, then fingertipping me to orgasm. But after it was over I felt his body and soul slump beside me.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I said to him.
“Yeah, that’ll really help.”
“So, um. This isn’t the first time, is it?”
“It’s a recurring issue.”
“Let’s try again.”
“I’m content. Honestly. I don’t need it.”
“Of course not.”
“Women don’t need to come every time. Why should men?”
“Exactly my thought.”
“It’s nice, just lying here.”
I bit his nipple then I scratched his chest. A trail of blood lay pooled on his hairy skin.
“That got your attention.”
Andrei sat up, scowling. At heart he was an old-fashioned man. I saw a trace of almost-rage in his eyes, his shoulders stiffened, a gulf started to open up between us. I could tell he was preparing to storm off.
So I stood up and posed naked for him.
He grinned. I clowned about, sashaying around, swinging my hips. I put the hotel TV on, and a wall filled with images of scantily clad singers dancing to an R amp; B rhythm. I danced to it too, exaggerating, messing about. He was erect now. I beckoned and he stood up.
“Dance for me,” I said, and he liked that idea and he laughed. He danced, awkwardly, without much sense of rhythm, with his cock swinging like an elephant’s trunk. I became more provocative in my dance. I started touching myself. He liked that too.
“Put it in your mouth,” he said eagerly, and that made me angry. This was my party, my game. And I could smell the fear on him. He was afraid of failing again, so he wanted to wank in my mouth while he was still in with a chance.
